By Barry Stagg
May 1998
CHURCHILL FALLS 1998
The new negotiations arranged by Newfoundland Premier Tobin and Quebec Premier Bouchard over new developments at Churchill Falls will have plenty of politically violent history to rely on for advice and judgment. To a Newfoundlander, Quebec electricity flowing from Churchill Falls is as great a symbol of the province's humiliation as a statue of General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham is to Lucien Bouchard.
Quebec and Canada were on the losing side in the 1927 Privy Council decision that gave Labrador to Newfoundland for all time. In the seventy years since that court decision Quebec and Canada have certainly extracted plenty of economic revenge from Newfoundland. The desperately inept negotiations by Newfoundland in the 1950's and 1960's that led to the Churchill Falls Agreement of 1966 has paid out to Quebec a rich compensation for losing a court battle in the British House of Lords.
In the realpolitik of 1998, Brian Tobin must know full well that any deal with Quebec on Labrador electricity will have potential pitfalls of the most deceitful and dangerous variety. After all, in the 1960's all it took for Newfoundland to be trapped at the Labrador border with its hydroelectrical dreams was the central- canadian navel gazing of Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Pearson, the unctuous, international diplomat would not hear or even dream of legislating a national power corridor for Newfoundland electricity over Quebec territory. It was better in 1966 to lie in cowardly fear of young Quebec patriots like Lucien Bouchard and the like than to let a small province like Newfoundland profit from a large world class asset like the booming waters of Churchill Falls.
Today all of the fiery, young separatists in Quebec are well known, middle aged politicians who either run the province or are active in opposition in both Ottawa and Quebec City. It is really no political coincidence that the recently resigned Quebec Liberal Leader Daniel Johnson is the son of the late Union Nationale Premier Daniel Johnson (Sr.) who was Quebec Premier during many of the pivotal Churchill Falls negotiations in the 1960's. The sentiments and motivations of Daniel Johnson (Sr.) are substantially the same as that of his son and of Quebec's present Premier. The idea of being masters in their own house has not stopped Quebec politicians from also making sure that they are effectively masters in the Newfoundland household as well. That has never changed.
Now Brian Tobin is charged with the most important political task that any Newfoundlander can confront in this lifetime. That task is making sure that a fair deal on even,solid bedrock is negotiated for the development of the remaining Churchill Falls projects.
One of the things that has swung in the favour of Newfoundland is that the deregulation of the electricity business in the United States has forced Canada to effectively deregulate the wheeling of power across provincial power grids. What this really means is that Quebec cannot do business in the United States if it excludes other suppliers from using its power grid to transport electricity. The idea of wheeling or transferring power along other people's power lines was the essential concession needed from the federal government for Newfoundland in 1966. Prime Minister Pearson, to his eternal discredit, turned his back on Newfoundland and its Premier Joe Smallwood when this idea was broached. Now the apparent commercial enlightenment of the United States has overtaken the political intransigence of the Quebec-Ontario power axis that stood in the way of Newfoundland moving electricity nationally for these thirty long years.
That is the reality under which Brian Tobin must operate. It is a reasonable foundation for a good, responsible deal for Newfoundlanders. But one thing is certain, no deal of this magnitude will be good for Newfoundlanders if the basis for a final deal is distorted by any element of political expediency that involves concessions on a national basis to the perpetual cause of keeping Quebec in the Canadian federation. If the 1998 brand of Churchill Falls negotiation is sacrificed on the altar of appeasement of Quebec nationalism then the whole thing has a very good chance of rivalling the original Churchill Falls deal in terms of its ability to induce permanent nausea in any sensible Newfoundlander.
Carry on Premier Tobin with your eyes open and with the full knowledge that Newfoundlanders are also keeping their eyes wide open and constantly scanning the entire political horizon for signs of skulduggery in these modern days.